History Channel Aliens documentary

Of all UFO sightings reported, most can be explained as ordinary phenomena, and therefore discarded. However, there are some spectacular, well-documented UFO events have been officially investigated by government agencies, witnessed by pilots and confirmed by Air Force generals. No conventional explanations were found despite extensive efforts by experts to do so. These are the cases explored in "UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record" and in the History Channel special, "Secret Access: UFOs On The Record." Photo: U.S. Coast Guard, Salem, MA; 1952

The Remaining Incidents

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Mistaken Belief

This photo, taken by McMinnville, Ore., farmer Paul Trent in 1950, is among the most thoroughly analyzed in UFO history. No evidence of a hoax was ever found. Leslie Kean writes in the introduction to her book: Neither I nor the other writers are claiming that there are alien spacecraft in our skies, simply because we do not deny data showing a physical presence of something there. The term 'UFO' has been misused and has become so much a part of popular culture that its original (and accurate) definition has been nearly completely lost. Almost everyone equates the term 'UFO' with extraterrestrial spacecraft, and thus, in a perverse twist of meaning, the acronym has been transformed to mean something identified rather than something unidentified. The false but widespread assumption that a UFO is, of necessity, an alien spaceship is usually the reason the term generates such an exaggerated and confusing range of emotional responses. Recognition of the extraterrestrial hypothesis as being a valid, although unproved, possible explanation worthy of further scientific scrutiny is something entirely different from approaching the subject of UFOs as if this discovery had already been made. Photo: McMinnville, OR, 1950